Pro-Hamas demonstrators march in the Dutch city of Nijmegen. Photo: Reuters/Romy Arroyo Fernandez

Hamas’ massacre of Israelis on October 7 shocked everyone in Israel and abroad. So did the brutality of the attack, the cruelty of the murders, and the inhumanity of the torture.

But there were warnings, and the slaughter of at least 1,200 Israelis, the wounding of more than 4,800, and the kidnapping of at least 238 hostages should not have come as a surprise.

One of those warnings occurred in 2019, when Hamas Political Bureau member Fathi Hammad explained in detail Hamas’ intentions, goals, and aspirations: To murder “every Jew on the planet”:

Hamas Political Bureau member Fathi Hammad: “We are sharpening the knives … We were created here in Gaza to shatter and get rid of this [Zionist] entity … If we die it will be when we are killing you [Jews], and we will cut off your heads, Allah willing … There are seven million Palestinians abroad … You have Jews everywhere. We must attack every Jew on the planet — slaughter and kill … And you, the people of the West Bank … We want the knives to come out. Five shekels [for a knife] — isn’t the throat of a Jew worth five shekels to us? … I will die as I blow up and cut — what? The throats of the Jews and their legs. We will tear them to shreds, Allah willing.”

[Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), July 12, 2019]

Through the prism of Hamas’ massacre and attack on Israel on Oct. 7, the statement by Hammad in 2019 now looks like a chilling forecast.

Hammad’s words also stress that Hamas’ goal — as the terror organization states in its charter — is to destroy Israel and kill all Jews, not only in Israel, but in the entire world.

But Hamas is not alone in this goal. Palestinian Media Watch has exposed numerous statements by Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah officials that prove they share the goal of Israel’s destruction.

The PA has likewise been making genocidal threats for years and justified killing of Israelis and Jews. For example, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor on Islam, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who Abbas appointed to be the Supreme Shari’ah Judge, explained to Palestinian viewers of official PA TV that Islam explicitly calls to “kill” people who “attack my home … my land … my homeland … my property … my honor” —  all crimes the PA accuses Israel of committing:

Similar calls and teachings have been disseminated by PA officials saying that Jews are Satan in human form, humanoids, apes and pigs, evil, human waste, and that Palestinians therefore are justified in killing them and that Islam even wants it.

During the current war, the next generation of PA leaders — members of Fatah’s Student Movement — have been calling on Allah to murder Jews, while the PA has instructed preachers in mosques to teach that killing of Jews is an Islamic imperative.

Hamas’ threats were ignored until it was too late. It is time Israel and the world took the PA’s genocide threats at face value.